Sections Above and Below This Page:

an unoflficial historian, having authored a sensational
catalogue of footnotes on the Beat Generation as well as several
other cheap paper pulps about the drug-oriented, bohemian way of
life to appeal to the insatiably prurient appetites of
middle-class suburbia. While Claude operated the Gestefax stencil
maker and printed up handouts on the machines, Chester would
scour the Haight-Ashbury district, looking for "hot"
news items which he jotted down in one of the many composition
books he carried around in a weathered canvas bag that hung from
his shoulder by an adjustable strap which had been in the same
position for about fifteen years.

The Communication Company had been modeled after the Digger
Papers' operation, and the service it provided the people of the
Haight was exceedingly valuable because the news it disseminated
was for the most part, essential and needed. The only trouble was
that both Claude and Chester also worked on the staff of Ramparts'
advertising department where they spread all the newsworthy
information about the Haight-Ashbury to the magazine's editors,
as a matter of conversation. Since Chester had a well-marked and
unrelenting ambition to become a famous underground journalist,
Emmett suspected him of feeding those editors too much
"news" about the Diggers that was nobody's business.
So, he remained wary, and considered himself alone, when he
entered Warren Hinckle III's house with the two of them. His sole
mistake was in going there at all.

Hinckle III glad-handed him at the door and invited them all
inside an expensively furnished, tastelessly comfortable salon
where Emmett planted the grimy seat of his dungarees on a large,
clean, white-tufted sofa. After he was asked his preference, he
was handed a giant tumbler filled with practically half a pint of
Southern Comfort and several square chunks of ice, which clinked
around in the thick, heavy glass, making that rich, solid sound
you hear in Hollywood movies. It was all right and Emmett enjoyed
the juice, even though he had to use both hands to drink it.

Warren Hinckle III was pouring himself a fist of whiskey from
a bottle on a portable liquor cart. He appeared to be one of
those middle-aged, heavy-drinking, college fraternity types who
operate as journalists in the radical-liberal political arena for
their own personal prestige and self-importance, as well as for
the money they make from their usually short-lived publications
and the exaggerated influence they feel they assert on minor
public officeholders. Their motives are seldom, if ever, based on
any progressive, hu [end page 313]